Netflix Quick Review: Adventures in Public School

Adventures in Public School is the perfect film, for when you don’t want to feel the actual emotion-packed into To All The Boys I’ve Loved, but your not at the point of self-loathing that you actually waste your time watching The Package. Netflix finally pulled the cord and now people like me might be outlet as people search for opinions on the lesser viewed content at the depth of the streaming service. The perfect way to describe this movie is what a couple YouTube Comments that were left on the trailer and that’s that:

It comes across that the writer has never met a person who was home schooled before, but also has never been to public school either.

Adventures in Public School comes across as an intentionally manufactured cringe-inducing brand of humor. Unfortunately instead of that awkwardness resonating from the characters or the viewer, it instead comes from behind the camera. The incenstual vibe from Norman Bates and his mother in this movie was discomforting and failed to bring much humor despite admittedly Judy Greer have an abundance of charm to her. Honestly might have been a better idea to have focuses on Judy Greer’s helicopter parent who’s two attached to her kid and tries to fulfill the adolescent relationships he lacks due to being homeschooled. I mean it still would have been unfunny but at least would have been a little focused and more original than nerdy outsider kid has to deal with bullies and get the girl of his dreams.

I’m not a fan of how this film looks, the pastel color of the locations and the overuse of gel lighting just looks that an attempt to make something that looks cool than actually having purpose or reason for being so. It’s certainly stylized, I will give them that but I’m sure your high school didn’t look like the neighborhood from Edward Scissorhands, so you’ll agree that it’s kind of odd. I’m not really sure, why he had to attend the Wayside school, but then again I’m not really sure why anything in this movie exists.

Why does the girl have a prosthetic leg, is it to prove a point that he’s kind of having a superficial crush on her or just to give her a stupid gimmick. It’s a type of movie that’s already oversaturated at this point: It’s not as endearing as Eighth Grade, progressive as Love Simon/Alex Strangelove, fun and energetic as Be More Chill, or all around well executed as Edge of Seventeen or Lady Bird. In theory this movie has a lot to play with obsessive mother controlling her son’s teenage rebellion and how he sort of becomes the horrible byproduct of her smothering. A homeschooler learning the horrors and benefits of public school and how socializing is a vital aspect of growing up. It achieves nothing, and has nothing of real merit to say besides wow wasn’t high school zany but not really emphasis our shared high school experience but show an alien going to a high school with a different breed of aliens.

It’s a strange duality to this movie in that I think it’s worthless and is extremely unnecessary yet at the same time it is rather inoffensive. It’s certainly got an ounce of originality in the brand of humor and nonsensical approach to what the hell there doing in any single regard might tickle someone else’s funny bone and good for you if it did but for me I found it quite strange and more so… boring.

So that is my mad ramblings on Adventures in Public School, I found it extremely forgettable but not the worst thing to put on while distracted by other things. What did you think, let me know comment below. Keep it cool, and as always I will see you at the movies.